Wildfires Across Europe Unearth Buried World War Bombs and Mines

As wildfires continue to scorch parts of Europe, they are exposing a hidden danger beneath the charred earth: unexploded bombs and mines from the World Wars. In several countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, fire crews have reported blasts from old ordnance, and in some cases, have had to call in military bomb disposal teams.

In the High Fens, a peat-bog forest in eastern Belgium that was the site of fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge, firefighters have heard explosions as the flames reached buried munitions. Tony Hosmans, an emergency services spokesperson, said, "There were some known places for munitions from the second World War with German grenades and American bullets. We heard a few bombs exploding (during the fire) and a few bombs were discovered too. And the demining unit from the army came to manage this at one moment for one of these."

Local historian Bernard Collard, who runs the Elsenborn War Museum near the German border, says the danger is real and unpredictable. "Naturally, with the fires in the Fagnes and since there was fighting here, I heard that there were explosions," he said. "Grass has grown over them, and they’re partially buried in the ground, so of course, that’s an added danger."

Collard, who is authorized to use a metal detector on former battlefields, has found everything from mortar shells and machine guns to helmets and even a human skeleton. He notes that it is impossible to estimate how much ammunition remains buried. "Last year, a farmer was plowing his fields with a plow. He unearthed a German mortar," he said, adding that they then contacted police and bomb disposal experts.

The fires have also uncovered caches of ammunition in southwestern France, near Bordeaux, and in Germany's Northern Rhine-Westphalia region, where a bomb-disposal team was dispatched to a forest threatened by flames. Jonas Tepe, a spokesperson for that region, warned that heat can trigger the explosives, making them even more hazardous.

Belgium's Ministry of Defense says it receives requests about every week to help disarm explosives, though it does not consider the High Fens a "hot spot" compared to other areas. In western Belgium, farmers near Ypres, site of brutal World War I trench warfare, regularly unearth remnants during plowing, a phenomenon known as the "iron harvest." Nationwide, Belgium's bomb disposal service responds to over 3,000 calls a year and disposes of 200 to 250 tons of leftover munitions.

This year's wildfire season has been particularly severe, fueled by heavy winter rains that spurred vegetation growth, followed by summer drought and heat. The flames have moved across landscapes that have long held the remnants of past conflicts, turning a natural disaster into a reminder of the wars that once raged on this ground.